It may sound surprising, but Philosophy Professor Daniel Dennett, a prominent atheist, and University Chaplain David O'Leary, a Catholic, came to an agreement of sorts at a forum on religion yesterday.
At the first inaugural Dean's Faculty Forum Committee, a large audience that included University President Lawrence Bacow packed into the Coolidge Room and heard the two speakers discuss the importance of religious education.
Dean of Arts and Sciences Robert Sternberg organized the forum to offer Tufts faculty further exposure to the Tufts community.
"I wanted a way in which we could become familiar with what our own faculty are doing," he said.
Dennett is nationally renowned for his analysis of the evolution of religion as a natural phenomenon. He has also contributed significantly to the "Brights," a coalition that seeks to bring a new and positive prominence to atheists, agnostics and others who believe in a "naturalistic" world free of mystical and supernatural elements.
Dennett's discussion focused on what humans can learn from religions' evolution, referring to his new book, "Breaking the Spell."
He began with an analogy, comparing the evolution of religion to the development of the dairy cow: The creature is essentially a product of genetic engineering, he said.
The cow's ancestor, the Auroch, was naturally selected to survive over many years. The Auroch was then domesticated, and humans selectively bred its progeny to produce cows with the best characteristics.
Like the dairy cow, "religions are brilliantly-designed systems with an evolutionary history," Dennett said. "We have to look at the pre-historical origins of religion to understand what they are."
Dennett said that many find his tone to be inappropriate for analyzing religion, but he said that a certain level of healthy dialogue and critical thinking is necessary to do so effectively.
"We need to look at religions respectively, but not hyper-respectively," he said.
Dennett then compared ideas to parasites that manipulate their hosts. People may die for some religions, he said, in the same way that people will die in the name of other ideas such as communism, freedom or democracy.
Humans are exceptional in this regard, Dennett said, noting that most other species on the planet are devoted entirely to maximizing their progeny.
"We have managed to become animals that can decide to devote our life to an idea," he said. "Ideas, not worms, hijack our brains."
Similar to a gene or virus, an idea is information that is obsessed over, and then replicated by being spread to other people.
Dennett said that some people believe in God, and some people believe in belief in God. The difference between the two has been eclipsed, he said, by adaptations of organized religion.
"Organized religions have re-arranged their doctrines so that it's very hard to tell the difference in belief in God and belief in belief in God," he said.
Other adaptations of organized religion include not blaming God for anything bad that happens, but praising God for good that occurs, he said.
Dennett argued that personal virtue is not confined to religious
people.
"I think you know that there are people who do not have God in their lives and are just as moral and just as hard-working as anybody else," he said. "If people begin telling us otherwise, we need to point it out, and tell them not to say it. It's just not
true."
Dennett said that he would support the teaching of world religions for all children. He said that children should be taught the history, creed, rituals, music and symbols of every religion.
"As long as you teach them this, you may teach your children whatever you want," he said. "Toxic religions depend on enforced ignorance in the young."
O'Leary's remarks followed Dennett's.
"I stand and represent the religious folk, but the religious folk with a mind," he said.
"I'm very pleased that Dan Dennett values religion so highly that he writes on it for over 400 pages," O'Leary continued. "I believe one does have to understand religious beliefs and its expressions in order to understand its role in society."
O'Leary said that religion should be viewed as an adjective, something used to evaluate and describe all things.
"Slowly we need to start to understand a culture or a society by what it holds as sacred," he said.
O'Leary said that reading ancient texts is important in understanding cultures' concepts of the sacred. He said that it's important to understand that sacred texts follow sacred traditions, and not the other way around.
"There are tools for understanding sacred texts. The Creator did not come down and say 'Psst, read this book.' There was a culture formed from someone saying 'I have this idea,' and people followed," he said.
He then discussed various religious education programs at Tufts and other universities and agreed with Dennett on the importance of such programs.
Tufts' own comparative religion department "does not teach fate," he said. "It is focused on giving the tools to break open what is sacred."
O'Leary discussed a program of religion and secondary education available at Harvard's Divinity School.
A Tufts graduate is currently involved in the program, which focuses on educating young children on the practices of various religions.
"It promotes exactly what Dan Dennett was talking about," O'Leary said.
